December 30, 1999

GIVING
PEACE A CHANCE

I
checked in a few standard quote books and in Strong's Exhaustive Concordance
of the Bible and was shocked. There is very little in what is widely viewed
as our common cultural heritage that describes and celebrates the benefits of
peace. That should be one of our tasks in the New Millennium.

(Yes, I know, it isn't really. Not only is 2000 the last year of the Old Millennium
rather than the first year of the New, but the calendar-makers in the Middle
Ages almost certainly got it wrong and the real 2,000th anniversary of Jesus'
birth more than likely happened in 1996  not to mention that it's most
unlikely it occurred in December. But the first number of the year will change
and that's not only significant to computers, it is sure to have psychological
significance for us humans. So I'm going with the flow, though I need little
excuse to party twice.)

It's certainly true enough that the Bible has Jesus saying, "Blessed are
the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God." And there
is imagery of peace in some of Isaiah's prophecies that still have the power
to inspire and even bring tears to people of relatively normal sensibilities.
But most of the places the word appears in the Bible it refers more to personal
or household peace rest, repose, times of quietness with perhaps an opportunity
for contemplation. The idea that peace of that character is desirable and spiritually
necessary is more often taken for granted than explained or described. The benefits
of peace among nations and peoples are assumed to be desirable in a few places,
but there's little elaboration.

A PEACEABLE
KINGDOM

The Isaiah prophecy (Chapter 11) referring to "a
rod out of the stem of Jesse" on whom the spirit of the Lord shall rest
viewed by most Christians as a foreshadowing of Jesus  offers the most
elaborate picture of the kind of peace the Lord will establish when His benevolent
dominion is finally established. It has inspired art of all kinds, from the
memorable Pennsylvania Dutch "Peaceable Kingdom" painting to music
of every era, including an anthem written just a couple of years ago that my
church choir loves to sing.

"The
wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the
kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little
child shall lead them. "And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young
ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. "And
the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall
put his hand on the adder's den. "They shall not hurt nor destroy in all
my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord,
as the waters cover the sea."

Depending on whether you view the passage literally or metaphorically, it is
either so fantastic as to seem unnatural and impossible or quite realistic in
its apprehension of the difficulties of attaining peace and harmony. In any
case, its images are deftly chosen to be especially striking. The idea of asps
and adders that would not harm young children cannot but grab one's attention,
especially the attention of desert dwellers.

I choose to view the passage metaphorically, as a recognition that in this vast
and sad old world there are many kinds of people, genetically, culturally and
psychologically, and that one must recognize and reconcile those differences.
Some of us are more like cattle and some of us are more like wolves, bears or
lions, who are not predators (necessarily) because they have consciously chosen
evil but because that is the way they are without countervailing influences.
But when we understand how to attain a peaceable kingdom, such people will come
to comprehend that their interests and ambitions do not require that they devour
others (literally or metaphorically) to be true to their natures.

Perhaps the passage is meant to be taken literally. Maybe we'll find out at
the Second Coming. But if it happens, I suspect it will be a while. The human
race doesn't display much evidence of having gotten it yet. Which is one reason
we peacemakers still have so much work to do.

PEACE
THROUGH WAR

The quotes on peace from more secular literary
references like Bartlett's seldom have much content either. About half of those
I found refer mainly to personal peace peace of mind, the peace that a loved
one's presence confers, the peace to be found in the countryside, the peace
that reigns in a happy household. Of those that refer to peace in a political
or international context, perhaps half echo John F. Kennedy, who once said,
"It is an unfortunate fact that we can secure peace only be preparing for
war," a sentiment going back to Horace, Machiavelli and George Washington.
Theodore Roosevelt, of course, said something similar.

George Bernard Shaw, in "Man and Superman," gives the Devil the best
lines on the subject. "In the arts of peace Man is a bungler. I have seen
his cotton factories and the like, with machinery that a greedy dog could have
invented if it had wanted money instead of food. I know his clumsy typewriters
and bungling locomotives and tedious bicycles: they are toys compared to the
Maxim gun, the submarine torpedo boat. There is nothing in Man's industrial
machinery but his greed and sloth: his heart is in his weapons. This marvelous
force of Life of which you boast is a force of Death: Man measures his strength
by his destructiveness. What is his religion? An excuse for hating me. What
is his law? An excuse for hanging you. What is his morality? Gentility! An excuse
for consuming without producing. What is his art? An excuse for gloating over
pictures of slaughter. What are his politics? Either the worship of a despot
because a despot can kill, or parliamentary cockfighting."

And that was written in 1903, before the orgies of state-sponsored bloodshed
and slaughter that made the century now departing the bloodiest in human history.

A PRESIDENTIAL
EXPLANATION

Most of the American president invoked peace in
their inaugural addresses, but few explained what they meant by it or showed
any evidence of understanding it in anything more than an incantatory sense.
Interestingly, the best passage I found was by Dwight Eisenhower, a professional
warrior for most of his life, in his second inaugural address:

"We
seek peace, knowing that peace is the climate of freedom. And now, as in no
other age, we seek it because we have been warned, by the power of modern weapons,
that peace may be the only climate possible for human life itself. "Yet
this peace we seek cannot be born of fear alone: it must be rooted in the lives
of nations. There must be justice, sensed and shared by all peoples, for without
justice the world can know only a tense and unstable truce. There must be law,
steadily invoked and respected by all nations, for without law the world promises
only such meager justice as the pity of the strong upon the weak. But the law
of which we speak, comprehending the values of freedom, affirms the equality
of all nations, great and small. "Splendid as can be the blessings of such
a peace, high will be its cost: in toil patiently sustained, in help honorably
given, in sacrifice calmly borne."

That's not a bad expression of high-minded statesmanship, circa mid-century.
It almost makes one nostalgic to read it now; in the light of post-Cold-War
imperialism it seems almost naïve.

Historians
have recently raised their estimation of Eisenhower, who while in office was
generally viewed as a benevolent but detached golfer. It is worth remembering,
however, that he was the only modern American president to express concern over
the growing military-industrial complex as he was leaving office, to be sure
 and his comments showed a certain amount of insight into the dangers
of the complex to freedom, the rule of law and fundamental American principles.

PATHS
TO PEACE

My favorite quote came from that old pacifist-activist
A.J. Muste: "There is no way to peace. Peace is the way." Martin Luther
King, Jr. said something similar: "Peace is not merely a distant goal that
we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal." A woman known as
Peace Pilgrim said: "When you find peace within yourself, you become the
kind of person who can live at peace with others."

Albert
Einstein once said that "Every kind of peaceful cooperation among men is
primarily based on mutual trust and only secondarily on institutions such as
courts of justice and police." The Swami Brahmanada declared that "In
truth, to attain to interior peace, one must be willing to pass through the
contrary to peace. Such is the teaching of the Sages."

THE NEED
FOR CONCRETE IMAGES OF PEACE

Much
of what I found was interesting and insightful, but the image of peace projected
was almost universally virtually devoid of content. What does peace mean beyond
the absence of war, a surcease of violence? Why is it desirable? What promise
does it bring beyond contentment and a good night's sleep?

Not
that contentment and rest are to be despised, but peacemongers would do well
to acknowledge that war has long held attractions, and not all of them obviously
ignoble or embraced only by a tiny band of elite leaders who gain power or wealth
from war. War can be seen as and sometimes really is an adventure that can be
experienced in no other way. It is a testing ground, especially for young men
who feel the need to discover what they are really made of. It can impart a
sense of camaraderie and fellowship, of strong feelings for one's fellows that
is difficult to find in any other endeavor. For many veterans even though they
may have horrific memories of blood and buddies lost war was the peak experience
of their lives.

What
can peace offer as a counter-attraction to what might be a genuine human need
to test oneself in situations that are not only exciting but present one with
the stark possibility of facing life or death? I suspect such risk seeking is
not a universal human desire I never felt much desire to participate in extreme
sports, even when I was younger and more foolish (though I must admit some of
the videos are fascinating) but it seems to be a widespread urge. And even those
who prefer to "pass our time in rest and quietness" (as the old Book
of Common Prayer's Collect for Peace puts it) still have a desire for various
kinds of excitement.

PEACE
AND POSSIBILITIES

I
didn't say it would be easy, nor did I claim to have the answers. It might take
us a millennium to fill up the platter of peace with meats, sweets and condiments
sufficient to inspire a critical mass of humanity to study war no more.

In
a sense, selling peace is a bit like selling freedom, presenting some of the
same difficulties. Those who advocate restrictions on freedom often have the
rhetorical advantage of promising some concrete benefit in exchange for giving
up some freedom. The promise may well be a false one, and it may even be known
to the promiser to be false. But it still has rhetorical and persuasive power.

The
honest advocate of freedom, however, can seldom make such promises. If people
are really free, you simply can't predict what they will do, and you can be
reasonably sure that some of them will behave badly. You can argue from theory
and experience that they will produce more, innovate more, love and laugh more
than those in bondage. But you can't honestly promise that things will turn
out for the best, and it's easy to sound like a naïve Pollyanna with an
unjustifiably rosy view of human nature.

In
making a case for peace, however, it might be possible to turn the circumstance
to an advantage. Peace, like freedom, carries possibilities that are simply
impossible to contemplate under tyranny or war. Maybe scientists won't discover
new methods of communication or nutrients that will allow us to live longer
and healthier lives; if they're living in bomb shelters and designing weapons,
however, you can be sure they won't. Maybe the next Bach or Rembrandt or Shakespeare
or Louis Armstrong won't delight future generations; if he is killed in a bombing
raid, however, you can be sure his or her gifts will never be shared.

That
might be a beginning. I sense there's a strong need to go well beyond what I
have said or can even imagine. I sense that serenity and joy can be more firmly
correlated with peace and the relationships among them can be explored in more
detail. I am sure, as Basil O'Connor once said, that "the world cannot
continue to wage war like physical giants and seek peace like intellectual pygmies."

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